“Right. Good night.”
They turned and walked to their own rooms more, each aware of the footsteps getting further away.
Franklin took off in the dark at 3:45 A.M. Winston had left three hours earlier and was already at his radio safe point. Conrad was on his last hour cleaning up, scrubbing the staging area for finger and footprints, DNA traces, and tire tracks in the dirt. For extra measure, he made the old hangar look like it had been used as shooting gallery by local kids. He left spent bb’s, broken bottles, and ragged targets everywhere. For extra measure, he smashed mostly empty beer bottles he’d pulled from dumpsters outside Billings’ bars and tossed disgusting moldy fast food into the mix. Should any investigators dust for prints, they’d be sent on a wild goose chase for years.
McCauley tried again to close his eyes, but he couldn’t relax enough to sleep. His mind raced through recent events. He tried to sort and catalogue them as if they were paleontological finds. Everything came back to the prime pyramid.
McCauley got out of bed and sat naked at the desk in his hotel room. He ran his index finger over the impressions on the page; the rubbings he’d made. Indentations, not actual numbers.
They’d made the leap to prime numbers, but he still wondered why it had been done this way.
Then McCauley thought about what Greene had said. The radio telescope in Puerto Rico.
Oh my, God!
Franklin was on course. Right speed, right altitude. His gloved hands held the throttle. The flight was smooth so far. Thermals that could affect the flight weren’t going to be an issue at this hour. He looked over the console. The displays were all lit with the green bulbs that Winston had installed, indicating that he was within ground communication range.
He checked his watch. Sixty seconds. Next, a final look at the GPS. On the prescribed flight path. Franklin pressed the P key on an onboard iPad. The green lights blinked three times and then went to a solid green again. He repeated the command three more times, entering the rest of the code with an A, T and H.
Thirty seconds.
Franklin opened the port door, unbuckled his safety belt and gave the cockpit GPS a last glance. He counted down to himself. 10…9…8…7…6…5. At four, he leaned out. The Cessna was now on autopilot, but he didn’t want to throw off the attitude or the altitude. His departure would be quick. 2…1.
Winston successfully acquired control of the Cessna. There was nothing else to do for another thirty-five minutes.
From his point of view and experience, the operation was amazingly simple. The principal guidance required a jerry-rigged radio control transmitter that connected to the plane’s receiver and wired through amplifiers and actuators. This controlled the pitch, yaw, and roll of the plane and the throttles. Radio control, or RC commands came from his fully charged iPad to receivers on the plane. As a redundancy, he had backup on the same frequency.
The RC transmitters were tuned to the Amateur 6 meter band, utilizing amplifiers, available through the open market, principally eBay, Craigslist, and local hobby shops. Their range was limited, but enough: thirty to forty miles at the most.
Franklin had brought the plane close enough. Now, if he’d followed the schedule correctly, the pilot would be gently floating to the ground. To be sure, Winston pitched the plane slightly lower which immediately registered on his laptop screen. Satisfied he had complete control, he returned the Cessna to its mission profile.
The real operational brain was the plane’s internal GPS tracker. It sent the Cessna’s position to the control site — Winston’s Winnebago — via another amateur radio link operating on the two meter VHF band. Inside amateur circles, this has been known as APRS for Automatic Position Reporting System. Winston was able to accurately track the position, velocity and altitude on an app.
He also had two eyes in the sky reporting back. Ham analog UHF video links fed back a semi-wide angle cockpit view for general assistance in remotely flying the aircraft. This gave him perspective of how the Cessna lined up with the horizon. The second camera provided a longer, forward field of view, key to the terminal guidance phase to target.
One more look inside the cave. One more, McCauley thought. His heart was racing as he drove in the dark toward the entrance of Makoshika State Park. He was more excited than ever to touch the wall again; to see if his feelings were right. One more. He had to.
Franklin deftly maneuvered his parachute to his landing zone — an abandoned ranch southwest of Glendive. This was an easy descent. He settled down fifty yards from the car that Winston had rented and left forty-eight hours earlier.
If anyone had seen him, his story would square with someone bailing out before a crash. But, at this hour, there weren’t any witnesses.
He gathered up his parachute, stuffed it in a backpack in the car’s trunk and drove to Interstate 94. The man known for now as Franklin wouldn’t stop until he got to Bismarck, ND.
The Cessna under Winston’s ground control was literally a large drone, cruising at 120 knots; on time and on target. A dawn glow was emerging low in the eastern sky. Soon, that light would allow the forward facing cockpit camera to see.
He checked his watch. 0448 hrs; 4:48 A.M. In one minute he should hear the plane. Ninety seconds later, he’d slowly bank the Cessna from a southern heading to west-southwest. Then eight minutes to burn off altitude and…
McCauley headed west into the darkness. In his rear view mirror he could see the sky brightening. Soon there would be enough light to cast long shadows and reveal haunting shapes created by the geological monuments that defined Makoshika State Park. This wasn’t bad earth. McCauley saw extraordinary beauty in the land, evidence of the world as it had been and where it was going. The ultimate message he wanted to impart to his students was that for now it was ours. And like the dinosaurs, we’re merely leaving footprints, only smaller. The earth has it all over us, he thought. Makoshika State Park is the proof. Old, yet ever evolving.
Forty-nine
Galileo struggled to his feet. Thinking. Thinking hard. The sixty-nine-year-old fixed a cold hard stare on his adversary, Father Vincenzo Maculano.
“Of course I remember Pino and Satori. We traveled together from Pisa. They were sponsors, patrons.”
“For a time you were inseparable; and they were infinitely insufferable with too much wine,” Maculano noted.
“That could be said of anyone.”
“Yes, I suppose it could.”
“Besides, we lost touch after.”
“And so you did, but they continued to talk of your travels together. The camaraderie and conquests, your experiments and your discovery.”
Galileo’s eyes widened. Indeed, the finding had haunted him, too.
“Remember how your dear friends drank, smoked and fornicated? When inebriated, which they increasingly became, they talked at the top of their lungs about their sexual peccadilloes, their free access to the rich and powerful, and one remarkable exploration with you. They gossiped with anyone who would share a drink with them; particularly if they didn’t have to pay. How do I know? Seventeen years ago my secretary was at a table next to theirs in Pisa. Though he tried at first to ignore them, it was impossible. Then he stopped trying. They bragged about their friend, the great Galileo Galilei and how they sponsored his early research.”